Senior Underwriter

Job description

At Liberis, our mission is to empower small and medium-sized businesses by removing finance as a friction to growth, delivering contextual, embedded financial solutions to support merchants at every stage of their business lifecycle. **The team** We are the Risk team responsible for managing the credit risk of Liberis’ portfolios, which include designing effective new strategies, managing the credit quality of our products across geographies, and providing specialist credit risk advice to the business. The Risk team is primarily based in London, UK with colleagues in Atlanta, US and Stockholm, Sweden too and covers Risk Analytics, Decision Science and Underwriting. Our mission is to grow Liberis profitably to become the leading embedded business finance provider and we are looking for an Underwriter to join us on this journey. **Who are you?** You are an experienced underwriter who combines strong credit judgment with a practical, customer-aware approach. You are comfortable making independent decisions on complex applications, explaining your rationale, and helping others strengthen theirs. You take ownership of quality and timeliness and use your experience to improve how the team works. Reporting to the Senior Underwriting Manager in Atlanta, you will serve as a senior individual contributor within the US Underwriting team. You will assess higher-complexity applications, act as a referral point, coach and mentor for your colleagues, and contribute thought leadership to the continued development of our US underwriting approach. **What you’ll be doing** As a Senior Underwriter, you will combine expert deal assessment with informal leadership across the team. You will make sound, balanced decisions that protect Liberis while helping small businesses access responsible finance. - Independently assess new and repeat funding applications, using bank statements, credit bureau data, financial statements, and other relevant information to make well-supported decisions - Exercise delegated approval authority with sound judgment, clearly documenting decision rationale and escalating applications when appropriate - Serve as a referral and escalation point for underwriters and business stakeholders on complex, unusual, or higher-risk applications - Coach and mentor underwriters through case discussions, side-by-side reviews, constructive feedback, and regular decision calibration - Support onboarding and ongoing development by sharing practical underwriting knowledge, strengthening consistency, and modeling high standards - Partner with customers and internal teams to gather information, resolve questions, and communicate underwriting decisions clearly and professionally - Provide underwriting thought leadership by identifying portfolio trends, emerging risks, and opportunities to strengthen policies, controls, and decision quality - Lead or support process improvements and ad-hoc analysis that improve efficiency while maintaining an appropriate balance between customer experience and risk **What we think you’ll need** The best Senior Underwriters can make decisions strategically when information is limited. They combine technical expertise with sound judgment, communicate their reasoning, and raise the capability of the people around them. Our team currently consists of several bright and talented individuals, and our next hire will further strengthen the team by not only contributing to underwriting interesting and complex deals but also by introducing fresh and experienced perspective. - 5+ years of experience in underwriting, ideally in small-business finance or a similar lending environment - A strong record of making independent credit decisions on complex applications and defending those decisions with clear, evidence-based reasoning - Strong knowledge of cash-flow analysis, affordability, financial statements, credit bureau information, fraud indicators, and common small-business debt structures - Demonstrated experience coaching or mentoring colleagues and giving constructive feedback that improves judgment and performance - The ability to provide thought leadership, challenge existing approaches constructively, and influence decisions across teams - Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex credit decisions to varied audiences - Sharp attention to detail and the ability to manage competing priorities, high application volumes, and service-level expectations - Strong Excel skills; analytical training and exposure to SQL are a plus **What happens next?** Think this sounds like the right next move for you? Or if you’re not completely confident that you fit our exact criteria, apply anyway and we can arrange a call to see if the role is fit for you. Humility is a wonderful thing, and we are interested in hearing about what you can add to Liberis! #LI-CG1